


Current of Time

by Isagel



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:35:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1923 the next time they run into each other by chance. (Written for the prompt word "electricity".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Current of Time

It's 1923 the next time they run into each other by chance, and twenty-five years and a Great War later, Tesla looks just the same as he did that night when he knelt by her chair with the needle. Seeing him again is like looking into a mirror, seeing her own immortality reflected in his face, in the young man's easy grace with which he moves. The others - James, Henry; she tries to never wonder about John - are partial reflections, the fact of their ageing apparent now, even if it progresses so slowly as to be hardly visible at all, but Nikola is like her in this, not a grey hair or the finest wrinkle added since the moment of his change. A perfect glass for her in which to see the startling impotence of time in the face of what she has become.

It catches her off guard tonight, the shock and thrill of that revelation, a vortex of power and unknown, endless wonder opening around her, making everything feel small and distant, huge and far too near. Perhaps it has been too long since she has seen him, perhaps it hasn't been long enough, but when he bends with a flourish to kiss her hand she feels the connection of their shared knowledge and experience like intoxication in her blood. Sometimes she finds him unbearable, and more often than she is comfortable with, she finds him in the wrong, but he's been her friend in many ways for a long time, and something in her leaps at the recognition in his eyes, sparks at the thought of how he understands her secrets, fathoms what she is. There is a ballroom full of people swirling around them, but none of them is alive the way they are.

She smiles and takes Tesla's arm, and the familiarity of how their bodies fit together rushes warm through her heart. The world is changing, always, and every new discovery is a source for her delight, feeds her curiosity to live and see and explore, but she wonders if she could do this, if she could live with this gift, if she didn't know the others were out there, too, doing the same. If she didn't get to see them, touch them, now and then, and know that some things stay the same.

As if to express a similar feeling, Nikola squeezes her hand where it rests against his arm, and declares,

"Helen, my dear, this calls for champagne! Do they have anything drinkable at this party? You know how I can't stand when they skimp on the wine."

She laughs, and lets herself be pulled towards the bar.

 

* * *

 

"Death ray?" she says, sitting back against the antique desk in their host's study. "Really?"

Nikola tips the last of the Veuve Clicquot into the crystal cup of his glass and waves the bottle expansively before depositing it empty on the mantelpiece.

"Well, maybe the name _is_ a bit over-dramatic. But once I've solved the minor issue of the electro-magnetic feedback, it will certainly be accurate. One of my greatest inventions, Helen, you'll see."

"You truly think this is the best application of your genius? The war is not five years behind us. It doesn't seem to me that weapons is what we should be devising."

"Oh, Helen," Nikola says and moves towards her. "I've always admired that about you. Your faith in humanity, your trust that peaceful solutions can be found. I've often wished I had the strength of your convictions."

She shrugs. It's an old discussion between them, going back to the time before, when they were both simply human, themselves.

"I merely think that we would be wrong to use our gifts to bring about violence."

He smiles, a wicked twist of his broad mouth, and leans close.

"No," he says, and raises his hand - the one that's not holding his coupe of champagne - to her face, stroking a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. "I can think of far more interesting uses for them, can't you?"

He barely touches her, but the current dances from his fingertips, a whisper of electricity between his skin and hers, brushing along the side of her neck.

"You haven't changed at all," she says, and it comes out sounding as the rebuke it is. But she arcs her neck, tilting her head to expose it, inviting his touch.

"Neither have you," he says, his lips against the shell of her ear. "As I recall, you always did have a certain..._weakness_ for this particular application of my powers."

His hand slides down the side of her neck, over her collarbone, skirting the thin strap of her dress. Everywhere he touches, electricity sparks - literal - between them, a soft crackle across her skin. Nothing substantial, yet; a tickle, a tease, reminder and promise of what she knows it can be.

"Surely you can't fault me for my scientific curiosity," she says. Teasing, too. She has a sudden flash of memory: his eyes meeting hers across the syringe filled with blood, the desire there - for knowledge, for discovery, for the unknown world about to open on the other side of their experiment - mirroring the hunger in her heart; reflecting it truly, as the others, hesitant there, at the brink and edge of science, never would.

"Never," he says, pressing his lips, soft and eager, to her neck, emphasis and punctuation. Perhaps she should be frightened, knowing what he is, but the thought of his teeth, now and here, only serves to excite her. She trusts him, and her beaded purse on the desk beside her holds a revolver. "In fact, if there is anything at all I can do to satisfy it…"

She laughs and rolls her eyes at the predictable double entendre, the dirt-streaked edges of his silk-smooth voice. But she lost her shyness in these matters in another century, and she's known Nikola Tesla long enough to understand that often the best way to rattle him is to cut clean through the games he likes so much to play and get to the point he's circling in on before him. And besides, the short, loose dresses of this post-war era, which would have been so scandalous when she was young, make it easy, almost inevitable, for her to take his hand and drag it downwards, pull it up beneath the long fringes at the hem of her skirt.

His fingers squeeze her thigh, sharp and quick like an involuntary reflex, and he makes a sound in her ear, a deep, sensual purring, abnormal and hungry. She knows without looking that for a second, his eyes flash black.

His voice is human when he speaks, though, haughty and flippant, very nearly masking the lust she detects underneath, that she feels in his touch where his fingers stroke her thigh, trailing above the upper edge of her stocking.

"Why, Helen," he says. "And here I was laboring under the impression that I'm the reckless one in this relationship. You do realize that our current setting falls somewhat short of private?"

They wandered hallways to get here from the ballroom, Tesla balancing glasses and bottle while she tried unknown doors, but they can still hear the music, a cheerful modern jazz tune only just muffled by the walls. It sounds wild and alive, like she feels. She doesn't really care that they have no key for the door.

She turns her head to look Nikola in the eye (blue now, normal-seeming), and says,

"I didn't realize you ever had anything against an audience?"

He smiles, amused, and sets the champagne glass he's still holding down on the desk, crystal clicking against wood.

"Touché, my dear," he says, and cups her cheek in his hand, a light touch that signals his kiss before his lips meet hers.

He's shaved his moustache since they did this last, but otherwise it's just what she remembers. The soft slide of his lips and the way his hand shifts to tighten in her hair when her tongue pushes into his mouth. The way he moans, not quite human, when she brings her own hand up to grab at his shoulder through his dinner jacket, pulling him closer. He tastes of expensive champagne and of the blood they share, and she spreads her legs a little, asking him in.

He lifts her then - no effort with vampire strength, although he's slight enough that it's possible she's heavier than he is - pushes her up to sit on the edge of the desk so that he can part her legs around his narrow hips, his fingers shifting to the inside of her thigh, stroking the delicate skin there with a lightness that is almost unbearable, skimming across soft flesh with the merest hint of scratching claws.

She groans, tilting her head back, away from their kiss, and there, oh, _there_ the current comes, a buzz from his fingers _into_ her, not teasing now, but vibrating down to the bone, gradually increasing in intensity, and when she looks down, she can see it, see his hand on her bare leg where her skirt has ridden up almost to her waist, the electricity shivering blue-white like lightning between them, obscene and dangerous and beautiful, perfectly under his control.

Her eyes drift shut as she savors the tingling of it, the almost pain that isn't pain at all, her breathing catching on the ebb and flow of it, her hips arching forward and up, wanting.

"Yes," Nikola whispers, and it's not arrogant but awed, reverent. "God, Helen, the way you take this, let me..."

The current breaks, leaving her panting, and there are claws again, almost-not-quite touching her, and then the sound of silk ripping, her underwear pulled from her body, leaving her bare. His fingers curve over her sex, cupping her, and she gets a hand down on the desk behind her to support her weight, so that she can push herself against him, grind into his touch, her legs around his waist. She can feel strands of her hair slipping from their pins, spilling down over her shoulders, knows that she looks disarranged and despoiled. As untamed as any abnormal in her sanctuary.

"Come on," she says. "I thought the great Tesla wanted to dazzle me?"

Nikola laughs, and shakes his head.

"I've missed you, Helen Magnus," he says. "There really is no one quite like you."

She only just catches the unexpected seriousness in his eyes, feels it twist something inside her chest, and then he flips the switch.

The force of the current is different here, warmer and stronger and so deliciously close to too much. It makes her quiver, tremble, every sensitive nerve alight with it, pleasure sparking brightbrightbright between her legs. He spreads her labia and the electricity licks between them, tongues of lightning, and then his fingers push inside, breaching her, curving to press against just the right spot and she nearly arcs off the desk, because the power is there, too, pulsing within her, vibrating against her inner walls as current leaps from his thumb against her clitoris. And, oh, it's perfect, better even than she remembered, her muscles clenching and contracting in ways she can't control, spasming under the stimulation, and when she comes, it seems to never stop, the convulsions going on and on and on until she thinks her body might break with them, shake into pieces, and she rides the pure, blazing pleasure of it all the way through, all the way until she can't, until she fumbles for his hand and grabs it, and it stops.

She keeps him there, holds his hand pressed between her legs, his fingers inside her, for long moments, as she breathes through the aftershocks. Eyes closed, flat on her back on the hard desk, and she doesn't know when her arm gave out, but she also doesn't remember screaming, and the rawness of her throat is undeniable evidence that she did.

She cracks her eyes open and pushes up on her elbow, releasing Nikola's hand with a squeeze to reach for the glass of champagne he left on the desk, letting the still cool wine wet her dry mouth.

He pulls out of her, slowly and carefully, pulling the handkerchief from his breast pocket and shaking it out to wipe his fingers.

"I believe that was my glass," he says, actually managing to sound put-upon. "I knew I should have brought another bottle."

It's an absolutely ridiculous thing to say, and it makes her laugh with a ridiculous, wild joy (because he's him, still the same as she is still the same, different as she is different), the sound loose and warm like the sex-drained muscles of her body, like the music still playing down the hall.

"I promise we'll get you another bottle," she says, dragging her foot around the curve of his hip, stroking her toes down the front of his trousers, across the hard bulge of his erection. "Later. When you'll need it."

"Somehow I think I can live with that arrangement," he says, his hand closing warm around her ankle.

The thought crosses her mind that they're going to live with their arrangement for a more than considerable length of time. It makes the long, dark stretch of road ahead crackle with sparks of light.


End file.
